brassicas | Ramblingrose

Welcome to my blog/journal/whatever

This is the real guts of this website. The old website and its archived posts is still available at its old url. Newcomers might like to dip into it every now and then.

Welcome to you all. Amazingly I still don't seem to be running out of ideas on what to write - well occasionally - but I have my writer's block strategies to turn to - see the text on the right. Check this page for the latest posts and if something interests you just click on it. It's easy to leave a comment and I love to read them. And now you can subscribe to the blog and get emailed notifications of new posts. And sorry I just don't understand Facebook.

"We are not here for long. So let's at least make ourselves something good to eat."

Nigel Slater

"I was born hungry, not a cook."

Julia Child

"One cannot think well, love well, sleep well, if one has not dined well"

Virginia Woolf

Writer's block

Every now and then I can't think of a suitable topic and so I have devised a few strategies to get around this.

Lucky dip

The first strategy I devised is to go to one of my three cook book bookshelves, close my eyes and pick a book. Close my eyes again and pick a page. It's really quite an enlightening method of getting over writer's block.

'A word from'

My second strategy is to devote a post to the thoughts of one of my favourite cooks. Hopefully it will introduce them to you

Or

I shall choose a picture I have come across and extemporise on that.

A second kind of lucky dip

I have been thinking about first recipes in cook books - so I shall choose a book not quite randomly and then look at the first recipe for inspiration.

Comments I love reading your comments. Just add a name - any name - it needn't be yours, add an email, ditto, type in your comment and hit the Comment button. Done. Wix sends me an email to tell me what you said, so I can respond if needed. Mostly I just read and enjoy. If you would like to subscribe to this blog and get notifications of new posts then click here. It's free - just a way of knowing what I wrote about today.

enjoy

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A rambling change of plan

"The cream of enjoyment in this life is always impromptu. The chance walk; the unexpected visit; the unpremeditated journey; the unsought conversation or acquaintance." Fanny Fern Today I was facing the eternal problem - the dual one of what to cook for dinner, and what to do with a problem ingredient or, indeed, ingredients. Nothing new there. The starting point was romanesco, the end point after an enjoyable ramble around the net which encompassed life, the universe and

Aug 30

Abundance - a challenge

abundunce - "the situation in which there is more than enough of something" or "the quality of having what you want in life" Cambridge English Dictionary Yesterday we lunched with our friends with the superabundant garden. We over indulged in the most delicious food and wine, which has led to me feeling marginally poorly - mild alcohol poisoning to be blunt. On top of the wonderful food - the best lamb shank tagine I have ever tasted, and some orangey poached pears, not to

Aug 20

David Chang's fresh kimchi(s)

"Kimchi … you know you can just buy it, don’t you?" Zoe Williams/The Guardian And yes I do know that you can buy kimchi - indeed I bought some a little while ago to add to something I was making. It was in the recipe. I can't remember what the recipe was, and nor, to be honest can I remember tasting the kimchi. I do remember eating some in one of the dishes served to us at Ho-chi Mama in the city a long time ago - and that was delicious. It's one of those ingredients lik

Apr 22

Cabbage and the vagaries of memory

“Remembrance of things past is not necessarily the remembrance of things as they were." Marcel Proust This was going to be a relatively straightforward post inspired by the idea that 2026 is the year of the cabbage - which I I have been mulling over for a while - which would then be an occasion to talk about my favourite recipe for cabbage and finally being nudged into action about these things by Ottolenghi's latest newsletter which talked about all things cabbage. However,

Apr 12